recovery

Owners of the Sony Xperia L have something to celebrate today. No, it's not actually all of their birthdays on the same day, possibly because of a breach in the space-time continuum. TWRP is now officially available on the Sony Xperia L.

The Nexus 9 is still a new device, but it's a Nexus, and that means developers are going to tinker with it. In order to flash ROMs and whatnot, you need a custom recovery. Now there is one for this device. An official build of TWRP is live, and it brings some changes that take into account Lollipop's new security measures.

To get any serious modding done with an Android device, you need a custom recovery like TWRP. It's sort of a rite of passage for every new phone to get its own official build of TWRP, and today is the Note 4's big day. TWRP is now available for this device, but not for all variants just yet.

Alright T-Mobile users, it's time to get flashing, at least if you own an LG G3 or the 7-inch version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4. Team Win has released their custom recovery build for both of the T-Mobile variants of those devices, enabling power users to easily flash modifications and ROMs or backup the existing system. You can grab the T-Mo G3 recovery here, and the Galaxy Tab 4 recovery here.

Apparently the various unlocked and carrier models of both devices are just different enough to cause difficulty when flashing a modified recovery or ROM, and in both cases these TWRP builds are the first official ones for their respective devices.

The Team Win Recovery Project remains one of the more popular custom recovery options for custom ROM enthusiasts, and now the group has updated the core software to version 2.8. Things don't look different on the outside, but underneath we find a ton of new features that only the kind of technical users this tool is aimed at could love.

With this release, TWRP now uses a C++ based MTP implementation so that users can transfer files to both emulated storage and microSD cards alike.

Big things are happening for the smallest of Android devices. Over the last month, we've seen several attempts to extend the capabilities of Android Wear, some have worked out, while others haven't fared so well. Most of the activity has come in the form of 3rd-party apps, so there hasn't been much action for dedicated modders. That is, until today. Team Win just posted its first official custom recovery for the LG G Watch (dory).

The Galaxy Tab S, in either its 8.4 or 10.5 form, is one of the best Android tablets you could buy right now. Heck, we might even be so bold as to call it the best. Many of you will surely pick one up, and among you, more than a couple will want to wipe TouchWiz off to replace it with something less crowded. To do that, you're going to need a custom recovery, and the TeamWin folks have just the tool. Both the 8.4 and the 10.5 versions of the slate now have official TWRP 2.7 support.

Though we just finished up our rumor recap for pre-I/O leaks and rumors, we've received information regarding Google's plans for the Play Store suggesting that Google may be building cross-device app restoration into the store's Android app.

Information is sparse so far, but from what's available to us, it appears that Google may be working on new functionality to restore apps and "data" to a new device, based on the data accrued on another device.

Compared to the popular third-party alternatives, Android's stock recovery has always been pretty...weak. Makes sense, because it's not really meant to do all the stuff that ROM flashers tend to use recovery for, but rather a failsafe of sorts in case something goes awry.

With L's Android release, the recovery is getting a little bit more useful with two new options: reboot to bootloader and power down. Nothing groundbreaking here, but still incredibly useful (especially "reboot to bootloader") for those times when stock recovery is the only option.